When a party, such as a consumer, provides its address (e.g., an email address) typically with permission to use that address, to a third party (an “Advertiser”), it's rare that the Advertiser will be the only party involved in delivering information to such a consumer. Generally, Advertisers distribute their consumer addresses to one or more members of a distribution chain involved in delivering messaging on behalf of the Advertiser. A consumer's address is vulnerable to all the risks inherent in exposed information—once disclosed, the information cannot be retrieved or “taken back”, and there is no audit trail or other method for determining how such information travels from one party to another.
For example, if a consumer's address falls into the hands of a third party who is not authorized to use it, there is no method for the Advertiser to prevent the unauthorized party from using such information. Similarly, there is no way for the Advertiser to determine how the information was leaked (e.g., a systems security breach, theft, insecure information storage, faulty business practices, deliberate sale or transfer of the information, etc) or to determine which of its vendors is responsible for the problem. Worst of all, the Advertiser has lost control of one of its most valuable assets—the trusted permissions of its customers and prospective customers, and the associated consumer's addresses. Loss of control of this valuable information results in a dilution of the value of the Advertiser's consumer addresses, a potentially irrecoverable loss of trust between the consumer and the Advertiser, and a potential increase in spam and headaches for the consumer. As consumers become more sophisticated, and more sensitive to the relevance of the messaging they receive, it is critical that owners of distribution addresses or list of addresses have the ability to effectively protect and manage how their address lists are managed and used.
An overview of the problems associated with unsolicited messages, and possible solutions, can be found in the paper titled “Fighting Spam by Encapsulating Policy in Email Addresses” by John Ioannidis, presented at Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2003, San Diego, Calif., USA 2003.
Much effort has been directed toward protecting actual addresses from undesirable exposure. To date, most effort has focused on using address aliases to protect addresses of a message recipient or a message sender. For example, U.S. patent application publication 2007/0180039 to Sutidze et al. titled “Anonymous Disposable Email Addressing System and Method of Use Thereo[f]”, filed Feb. 1, 2007, describes a system where a sender can establish a communication channel with a recipient based on aliases. If the recipient wishes, the channel can be blocked to reduce spam directed along the channel. Another example that is more closely focused on the sender includes U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,291 to Gabber et al. titled “System and Method for Providing Anonymous Remailing and Filtering of Electronic Mail”, filed Mar. 12, 1998. Gabber describes a system where a sender's address is replaced without requiring a use of a look-up table. U.S. Pat. No. 7,231,428 to Teague titled “Communication System Using Alias Management Rules for Automatically Changing Sender Alias in a Message Based on Group that Includes Recipient Address”, filed May 28, 2003, provides further capabilities directed to processing emails by using aliases for senders and where a recipient can have multiple aliases. Although useful for protecting identifies of individual address owners, the above references fail to address protecting addresses managed by others or by a distribution list owner.
Still others have attempted to resolve some of the issued with protecting and managing addresses by focusing on how messages are processed in general. U.S. Pat. No. 7,472,153 to Ben-Yoseph et al. titled “Bulk Message Identification”, filed Dec. 30, 2002, for example, describes a system where messages sent in bulk are treated distinctively in response to a sender's complying with a policy. Unfortunately, Ben-Yoseph also fails to offer guidance on how to properly manage address lists owned by others.
Still further progress is made toward managing addresses in general by U.S. patent application publication 2005/0114453 to Hardt titled “Pseudonymous Email Address Manager” Nov. 17, 2003. Hardt discloses a system where a recipient can use disposable email addresses as aliases and can modify message routing rules for messages addressed to the aliases. Even though Hardt contemplates a more mature approach to protecting addresses, Hardt also fails to appreciate that owners of a list of addresses require protection or auditing capabilities.
Yet still others attempted to address various aspects of distribution list or alias management as indicated by the following references:                U.S. Pat. No. 5,990,886 to Serdy et al. titled “Graphically Creating E-Mail Distribution List with Geographic Area Selector on Map”, filed Dec. 1, 1997, discusses using a map to select groups of recipients.        U.S. Pat. No. 7,120,927 to Beyda et al. titled “System and Method for E-Mail Alias Registration”, filed Jun. 9, 1999, describes an alias relay server that requires users to register with the serve before forwarding emails to an alias address.        U.S. Pat. No. 7,359,493 to Wang et al. titled “Bulk Voicemail”, filed Apr. 11, 2003, discusses identifying a group of recipients for voice mail based on stored targeting data.        U.S. patent application publication 2005/0204011 to Velayudham titled “Dynamic Private Email Aliases”, filed Mar. 11, 2005, describes creating alias based on indicia pertaining to communication context.        
What has yet to be appreciated is an alias that is used as an abstraction for a distribution list can be treated as a manageable object and valuable commodity separate from a distribution list. By changing focus from managing addresses or lists to managing aliases, many of the previously discussed issues can be readily addressed. For example, an alias management platform can be offered to distribution list owners through which aliases referencing their lists can be controlled or managed via an alias management policy. A list owner can manually or even automatically create an alias for a list and then offer the alias to interested parties. The platform can monitor the use of the alias to create an auditing trail reflecting the history of how the alias was used. In response, a list owner, or other managing entity, can enforce alias policies to ensure message senders, members of a message distribution chain, or other alias user properly behave according to the alias policy.
It has also yet to be appreciated that aliases, lists, or addresses can be treated as separate distinct objects within an alias management system. For example, aliases can have properties that are distinct from list properties or from address properties. Alias properties or alias attributes can be used by list owners to manage aliases distinctly from their lists. Furthermore, entities wishing to purchase access to aliases can shop or search for aliases based on attributes associated with a desirable content distribution chain. Attributes that their needs can include price, terms of use, number of uses, or other attributes associated with an alias.
Thus, there is still a need for system, methods, configuration, or apparatus for managing aliases.